If Tomorrow Comes (5 page)

Tracy began to feel the first stirrings of panic. She turned
to look at Perry Pope. His eyes were fixed on the judge.

“The defendant has admitted that she attempted to murder one of the outstanding citizens of this community—a man noted for his philanthropy and good works. The defendant shot him while in the act of stealing an art object worth half a million dollars.” His voice grew harsher. “Well, this court is going to see to it that you don’t get to enjoy that money—not for the next fifteen years, because for the next fifteen years you’re going to be incarcerated in the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women.”

Tracy felt the courtroom begin to spin. Some horrible joke was being played. The judge was an actor typecast for the part, but he was reading the wrong lines. He was not supposed to say any of those things. She turned to explain that to Perry Pope, but his eyes were averted. He was juggling papers in his briefcase, and for the first time, Tracy noticed that his fingernails were bitten to the quick. Judge Lawrence had risen and was gathering up his notes. Tracy stood there, numb, unable to comprehend what was happening to her.

A bailiff stepped to Tracy’s side and took her arm. “Come along,” he said.

“No,” Tracy cried. “No, please!” She looked up at the judge. “There’s been a terrible mistake, Your Honor. I—”

And as she felt the bailiff’s grip tighten on her arm, Tracy realized there had been no mistake. She had been tricked. They were going to destroy her.

Just as they had destroyed her mother.

The news of Tracy Whitney’s crime and sentencing appeared on the front page of the
New Orleans Courier
, accompanied by a police photograph of her. The major wire services picked up the story and flashed it to correspondent newspapers around the country, and when Tracy was taken from the courtroom to await transfer to the state penitentiary, she was confronted by a crew of television reporters. She hid her face in humiliation, but there was no escape from the cameras. Joe Romano was big news, and the attempt on his life by a beautiful female burglar was even bigger news. It seemed to Tracy that she was surrounded by enemies.
Charles will get me out
, she kept repeating to herself.
Oh, please, God, let Charles get me out. I can’t have our baby born in prison.

It was not until the following afternoon that the desk sergeant would permit Tracy to use the telephone. Harriet answered. “Mr. Stanhope’s office.”

“Harriet, this is Tracy Whitney. I’d like to speak to Mr. Stanhope.”

“Just a moment, Miss Whitney.” She heard the hesitation in the secretary’s voice. “I’ll—I’ll see if Mr. Stanhope is in.”

After a long, harrowing wait, Tracy finally heard Charles’s voice. She could have wept with relief. “Charles—”

“Tracy? Is that you, Tracy?”

“Yes, darling. Oh, Charles, I’ve been trying to reach—”

“I’ve been going crazy, Tracy! The newspapers here are full of wild stories about you. I can’t believe what they’re saying.”

“None of it is true, darling.
None
of it. I—”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I tried. I couldn’t reach you. I—”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m—I’m in a jail in New Orleans. Charles, they’re going to send me to prison for something I didn’t do.” To her horror, she was weeping.

“Hold on. Listen to me. The papers say that you shot a man. That’s not true, is it?”

“I did shoot him, but—”

“Then it
is
true.”

“It’s not the way it sounds, darling. It’s not like that at all. I can explain everything to you. I—”

“Tracy, did you plead guilty to attempted murder and stealing a painting?”

“Yes, Charles, but only because—”

“My God, if you needed money that badly, you should have discussed it with me…And trying to kill someone…I can’t believe this. Neither can my parents. You’re the headline in this morning’s Philadelphia
Daily News.
This is the first time a breath of scandal has ever touched the Stanhope family.”

It was the bitter self-control of Charles’s voice that made Tracy aware of the depth of his feelings. She had counted on him so desperately, and he was on
their
side. She forced herself not to scream. “Darling, I need you. Please come down here. You can straighten all this out.”

There was a long silence. “It doesn’t sound like there’s much to straighten out. Not if you’ve confessed to doing all those things. The family can’t afford to get mixed up in a thing like this. Surely you can see that. This has been a terrible shock for us. Obviously, I never really knew you.”

Each word was a hammerblow. The world was falling in on her. She felt more alone than she had ever felt in her life. There was no one to turn to now, no one. “What—what about the baby?”

“You’ll have to do whatever you think best with your baby,” Charles said. “I’m sorry, Tracy.” And the connection was broken.

She stood there holding the dead receiver in her hand.

A prisoner behind her said, “If you’re through with the phone, honey, I’d like to call my lawyer.”

When Tracy was returned to her cell, the matron had instructions for her. “Be ready to leave in the morning. You’ll be picked up at five o’clock.”

She had a visitor. Otto Schmidt seemed to have aged years during the few hours since Tracy had last seen him. He looked ill.

“I just came to tell you how sorry my wife and I are. We know whatever happened wasn’t your fault.”

If only Charles had said that!

“The wife and I will be at Mrs. Doris’s funeral tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Otto.”

They’re going to bury both of us tomorrow
, Tracy thought miserably.

She spent the night wide awake, lying on her narrow prison bunk, staring at the ceiling. In her mind she replayed the conversation with Charles again and again. He had never even given her a chance to explain.

She had to think of the baby. She had read of women having babies in prison, but the stories had been so remote from her own life that it was as though she were reading about people from another planet. Now it was happening to her.
You’ll have to do whatever you think best with your baby
, Charles had said. She wanted to have her baby.
And yet
, she thought,
they won’t let me keep it. They’ll take it away from me because I’m going to be in prison for the next fifteen years. It’s better that it never knows about its mother.

She wept.

At 5:00 in the morning a male guard, accompanied by a matron, entered Tracy’s cell. “Tracy Whitney?”

“Yes.” She was surprised at how odd her voice sounded.

“By order of the Criminal Court of the State of Louisiana, Orleans Parish, you are forthwith being transferred to the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women. Let’s move it, babe”

She was walked down a long corridor, past cells filled with inmates. There was a series of catcalls.

“Have a good trip, honey…”

“You tell me where you got that paintin’ hidden, Tracy, baby, and I’ll split the money with you…”

“If you’re headin’ for the big house, ask for Ernestine Lit-tlechap. She’ll take real good care of you…”

Tracy passed the telephone where she had made her call to Charles.
Good-bye, Charles.

She was outside in a courtyard. A yellow prison bus with barred windows stood there, its engine idling. Half a dozen women already were seated in the bus, watched over by two armed guards. Tracy looked at the faces of her fellow passengers. One was defiant, and another bored; others wore expressions of despair. The lives they had lived were about to come to an end. They were outcasts, headed for cages where they would be locked up like animals. Tracy wondered what crimes they had committed and whether any of them was as innocent as she was, and she wondered what they saw in
her
face.

The ride on the prison bus was interminable, the bus hot and smelly, but Tracy was unaware of it. She had withdrawn into herself, no longer conscious of the other passengers or of the lush green countryside the bus passed through. She was in another time, in another place.

She was a little girl at the shore with her mother and father, and her father was carrying her into the ocean on his shoulders, and when she cried out her father said,
Don’t be a baby, Tracy
, and he dropped her into the cold water. When the water closed over her head, she panicked and began to choke, and
her father lifted her up and did it again, and from that moment on she had been terrified of the water…

The college auditorium was filled with students and their parents and relatives. She was class valedictorian. She spoke for fifteen minutes, and her speech was filled with soaring idealism, clever references to the past, and shining dreams for the future. The dean had presented her with a Phi Beta Kappa key.
I want you to keep it
, Tracy told her mother, and the pride on her mother’s face was beautiful…

I’m going to Philadelphia, Mother. I have a job at a bank there.

Annie Mahler, her best friend, was calling her.
You’ll love Philadelphia, Tracy. It’s full of all kinds of cultural things. It has beautiful scenery and a shortage of women. I mean, the men here are really hungry! I can get you a job at the bank where I work…

Charles was making love to her. She watched the moving shadows on the ceiling and thought,
How many girls would like to be in my place?
Charles was a prime catch. And she was instantly ashamed of the thought. She loved him. She could feel him inside her, beginning to thrust harder, faster and faster, on the verge of exploding, and he gasped out,
Are you ready?
And she lied and said yes.
Was it wonderful for you? Yes, Charles.
And she thought,
Is that all there is?
And the guilt again…

“You!
I’m talkin’ to you. Are you deaf for Christ’s sake? Let’s go.”

Tracy looked up and she was in the yellow prison bus. It had stopped in an enclosure surrounded by a gloomy pile of masonry. A series of nine fences topped with barbed wire surrounded the five hundred acres of farm pasture and woodlands that made up the prison grounds of the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women.

“Get out,” the guard said. “We’re here.”

Here
was hell.

A stocky, stony-faced matron with sable-brown dyed hair was addressing the new arrivals: “Some of you are gonna be here for a long, long time. There’s only one way you’re gonna make it, and that’s by forgettin’ all about the outside world. You can do your time the easy way or the hard way. We have rules here, and you’ll follow those rules. We’ll tell you when to get up, when to work, when to eat, and when to go to the toilet. You break any of our rules, and you’ll wish you was dead. We like to keep things peaceful here, and we know how to handle troublemakers.” Her eyes flicked over to Tracy. “You’ll be taken for your physical examinations now. After that you’ll go to the showers and be assigned your cells. In the mornin’ you’ll receive your work duties. That’s all.” She started to turn away.

A pale young girl standing next to Tracy said, “Excuse me, please, could—”

The matron whirled around, her face filled with fury. “Shut your fuckin’ mouth. You speak only when you’re spoken to, do you understand? That goes for all you assholes.”

The tone, as much as the words, was a shock to Tracy. The
matron signaled to two women guards at the back of the room. “Get these no-good bitches out of here.”

Tracy found herself being herded out of the room with the others, down a long corridor. The prisoners were marched into a large, white-tiled room, where a fat, middle-aged man in a soiled smock stood next to an examination table.

One of the matrons called out, “Line up,” and formed the women into one long line.

The man in the smock said, “I’m Dr. Glasco, ladies. Strip!”

The women turned to look at one another, uncertainly. One of them said, “How far should we—?”

“Don’t you know what the hell
strip
means? Get your clothes off—all of them.”

Slowly, the women began to undress. Some of them were self-conscious, some outraged, some indifferent. On Tracy’s left was a woman in her late forties, shivering violently, and on Tracy’s right was a pathetically thin girl who looked to be no more than seventeen years old. Her skin was covered with acne.

The doctor gestured to the first woman in line. “Lie down on the table and put your feet in the stirrups.”

The woman hesitated.

“Come on. You’re holding up the line.”

She did as she was told. The doctor inserted a speculum into her vagina. As he probed, he asked, “Do you have a venereal disease?”

“No.”

“We’ll soon find out about that.”

The next woman replaced her on the table. As the doctor started to insert the same speculum into her, Tracy cried out, “Wait a minute!”

The doctor stopped and looked up in surprise. “What?”

Everyone was staring at Tracy. She said, “I…you didn’t sterilize that instrument.”

Dr. Glasco gave Tracy a slow, cold smile. “Well! We have a gynecologist in the house. You’re worried about germs, are you? Move down to the end of the line.”

“What?”

“Don’t you understand English? Move down.”

Tracy, not understanding why, took her place at the end of the line.

“Now, if you don’t mind,” the doctor said, “we’ll continue.” He inserted the speculum into the woman on the table, and Tracy suddenly realized why she was the last in line. He was going to examine all of them with the same unsterilized speculum, and she would be the last one on whom he used it. She could feel an anger boiling up inside her. He could have examined them separately, instead of deliberately stripping away their dignity. And they were letting him get away with it.
If they all protested—
It was her turn.

“On the table,
Ms. Doctor.”

Tracy hesitated, but she had no choice. She climbed up on the table and closed her eyes. She could feel him spread her legs apart, and then the cold speculum was inside her, probing and pushing and hurting. Deliberately hurting. She gritted her teeth.

“You got syphilis or gonorrhea?” the doctor asked.

“No.” She was not going to tell him about the baby. Not this monster. She would discuss that with the warden.

She felt the speculum being roughly pulled out of her. Dr. Glasco was putting on a pair of rubber gloves. “All right,” he said. “Line up and bend over. We’re going to check your pretty little asses.”

Before she could stop herself, Tracy said, “Why are you doing this?”

Dr. Glasco stared at her. “I’ll tell you why,
Doctor.
Because assholes are great hiding places. I have a whole collection of marijuana and cocaine that I got from ladies like you. Now bend over.” And he went down the line, plunging his fingers into anus after anus. Tracy was sickened. She could feel the hot bile rise in her throat and she began to gag.

“You vomit in here, and I’ll rub your face in it.” He turned to the guards. “Get them to the showers. They stink.”

Carrying their clothes, the naked prisoners were marched down another corridor to a large concrete room with a dozen open shower stalls.

“Lay your clothes in the corner,” a matron ordered. “And get into the showers. Use the disinfectant soap. Wash every
part of your body from head to foot, and shampoo your hair.”

Tracy stepped from the rough cement floor into the shower. The spray of water was cold. She scrubbed herself hard, thinking,
I’ll never be clean again. What kind of people are these? How can they treat other human beings this way? I can’t stand fifteen years of this.

A guard called out to her, “Hey, you! Time’s up. Get out.”

Tracy stepped out of the shower, and another prisoner took her place. Tracy was handed a thin, worn towel and half dried her body.

When the last of the prisoners had showered, they were marched to a large supply room where there were shelves of clothes guarded by a Latino inmate who sized up each prisoner and handed out gray uniforms. Tracy and the others were issued two uniform dresses, two pairs of panties, two brassieres, two pairs of shoes, two nightgowns, a sanitary belt, a hairbrush, and a laundry bag. The matrons stood watching while the prisoners dressed. When they had finished, they were herded to a room where a trusty operated a large portrait camera set on a tripod.

“Stand over there against the wall.”

Tracy moved over to the wall.

“Full face.”

She stared into the camera. Click.

“Turn your head to the right.

She obeyed. Click.

“Left.” Click. “Over to the table.”

The table had fingerprint equipment on it. Tracy’s fingers were rolled across an inky pad, then pressed onto a white card.

“Left hand. Right hand. Wipe your hands with that rag. You’re finished.”

She’s right
, Tracy thought numbly.
I’m finished. I’m a number. Nameless, faceless.

A guard pointed to Tracy. “Whitney? Warden wants to see you. Follow me.”

Tracy’s heart suddenly soared. Charles had done something after all!
Of course
he had not abandoned her, any more than she ever could have abandoned him. It was the sudden shock that had made him behave the way he had. He had had time
to think it over now and to realize he still loved her. He had talked to the warden and explained the terrible mistake that had been made. She was going to be set free.

She was marched down a different corridor, through two sets of heavily barred doors manned by male and female guards. As Tracy was admitted through the second door, she was almost knocked down by a prisoner. She was a giant, the biggest woman Tracy had ever seen—well over six feet tall, she must have weighed three hundred pounds. She had a flat, pockmarked face, with feral yellow eyes. She grabbed Tracy s arm to steady her and pressed her arm against Tracy’s breasts.

“Hey!” the woman said to the guard. “We got a new fish. How ‘bout you put her in with me?” She had a heavy Swedish accent.

“Sorry. She’s already been assigned, Bertha.”

The amazon stroked Tracy’s face. Tracy jerked away, and the giant woman laughed. “It’s okay,
littbarn.
Big Bertha will see you later. We got plenty of time. You ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

They reached the warden’s office. Tracy was faint with anticipation. Would Charles be there? Or would he have sent his attorney?

The warden’s secretary nodded to the guard, “He’s expecting her. Wait here.”

Warden George Brannigan was seated at a scarred desk, studying some papers in front of him. He was in his mid-forties, a thin, careworn-looking man, with a sensitive face and deep-set hazel eyes.

Warden Brannigan had been in charge of the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women for five years. He had arrived with the background of a modern penologist and the zeal of an idealist, determined to make sweeping reforms in the prison. But it had defeated him, as it had defeated others before him.

The prison originally had been built to accommodate two inmates to a cell, and now each cell held as many as four to six prisoners. He knew that the same situation applied everywhere. The country’s prisons were all overcrowded and understaffed.
Thousands of criminals were penned up day and night with nothing to do but nurse their hatred and plot their vengeance. It was a stupid, brutal system, but it was all there was.

He buzzed his secretary. “All right. Send her in.”

The guard opened the door to the inner office, and Tracy stepped inside.

Warden Brannigan looked up at the woman standing before him. Dressed in the drab prison uniform, her face bruised with fatigue, Tracy Whitney still looked beautiful. She had a lovely, candid face, and Warden Brannigan wondered how long it would remain that way. He was particularly interested in this prisoner because he had read about her case in the newspapers and had studied her record. She was a first offender, had not killed anyone, and fifteen years was an inordinately harsh sentence. The fact that Joseph Romano was her accuser made her conviction all the more suspect. But the warden was simply the custodian of bodies. He could not buck the system. He
was
the system.

“Please have a seat,” he said.

Tracy was glad to sit down. Her knees were weak. He was going to tell her now about Charles, and how soon she would be released.

“I’ve been looking over your record,” the warden began.

Charles would have asked him to do that.

“I see you’re going to be with us a long time. Your sentence is fifteen years.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in. Something was dreadfully wrong. “Didn’t—didn’t you speak to—to Charles?” In her nervousness she was stammering.

He looked at her blankly. “Charles?”

And she knew. Her stomach turned to water. “Please,” she said. “Please listen to me. I’m innocent. I don’t belong here.”

How many times had he heard that? A hundred? A thousand?
I’m innocent.

He said, “The courts have found you guilty. The best advice I can give you is to try to do easy time. Once you accept the terms of your imprisonment, it will be a lot easier for you. There are no clocks in prison, only calendars.”

I can’t be locked up here for fifteen years
, Tracy thought in despair.
I want to die. Please, God, let me die. But I can’t die, can I? I would be killing my baby. It’s your baby, too, Charles. Why aren’t you here helping me?
That was the moment she began to hate him.

“If you have any special problems,” Warden Brannigan said, “I mean, if I can help you in any way, I want you to come see me.” Even as he spoke, he knew how hollow his words were. She was young and beautiful and fresh. The bull-dykes in the prison would fall on her like animals. There was not even a safe cell to which he could assign her. Nearly every cell was controlled by a stud. Warden Brannigan had heard rumors of rapes in the showers, in the toilets, and in the corridors at night. But they were only rumors, because the victims were always silent afterward. Or dead.

Warden Brannigan said gently, “With good behavior, you might be released in twelve or—”

“No!” It was a cry of black despair, of desperation. Tracy felt the walls of the office closing in on her. She was on her feet, screaming. The guard came hurrying in and grabbed Tracy’s arms.

“Easy,” Warden Brannigan commanded him.

He sat there, helpless, and watched as Tracy was led away.

She was taken down a series of corridors past cells filled with inmates of every description. They were black and white and brown and yellow. They stared at Tracy as she passed and called out to her in a dozen accents. Their cries made no sense to Tracy.

“Fish night…”

“French mate…”

“Fresh mite…”

“Flesh meet…”

It was not until Tracy reached her cell block that she realized what the women were chanting: “Fresh meat.”